Pages

Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Classic Children's/YA: Liz Filleul on The Marlows Series by Antonia Forest

One of the coolest things about the classic children's/YA feature is discovering more about books and series I've never read. Antonia Forest's Marlows books have been on my 'to read' list for a decade or two without me actually getting round to them, but I'm going to have to change that after this fabulous post about them by Liz Filleul!

Number of books

10, published between 1947 and 1982. Their
reading order is: Autumn Term, The Marlows and the Traitor, Falconer’s Lure, End of Term,
Peter’s Room, The Thuggery Affair, The Ready-Made Family, The Cricket Term, The
Attic Term, Run Away Home.

Availability

Autumn
Term is easiest (and cheapest to find) as it’s been
republished as a Faber Children’s Classic.

The six non-school stories (those without
‘Term’ in the title) were recently republished by niche publisher Girls Gone
By, but are currently out of print – try eBay or Abebooks.

End
of Term, The Cricket Term and The Attic Term have been out of print since the 1980s – again, try
eBay or Abebooks. Or write to Girls Gone By requesting they reprint the holiday
books and the school stories!

The premise

Antonia Forest didn’t set out to write a
series, so the books are a mash-up of school, holiday and adventure stories
about the Marlow family – twins Nicola and Lawrie and their siblings Karen,
Rowan, Ann, Ginty, Giles and Peter. The four school stories take place at the
Marlow sisters’ boarding-school, Kingscote. With the exception of The Marlows and the Traitor, the
non-school stories are set at Trennels, the Marlows’ family farm. The books
cover a period of 29 months in the Marlows’ lives, but Forest chose to set each
story at the time she wrote it. Hence, in The
Marlows and the Traitor (1953), Ginty reminisces about the Blitz, while in Run-Away Home (1982), Lawrie dresses up
as a punk.

Why I like them

When I was growing up, the Marlows books
were banned by my local library for being too middle-class. Yet, Kingscote,
despite being an elite girls’ boarding-school, felt closer to my real-life
grammar school-turned-comprehensive in England’s Black Country than any other
fictional school I’d encountered – apart from Grange Hill. There are no
midnight feasts or practical jokes at Kingscote; instead the books focus on everyday
aspects of school life such as the annual Christmas play, netball and cricket
matches,friendship, rivalries and
favouritism. And, just as life isn’t always fair in a real school, so it isn’t
at Kingscote – Nicola, main character/hero of the series, is shafted on more
than one occasion, and the villainous Lois Sanger never does get her
come-uppance.

I like so many other things about the
stories, too – the strong characterisation (the Marlow girls’ personalities are
so distinctive that you don’t need to be told who is speaking – you can tell),
the developing love triangle between Nicola, Ginty and their neighbour Patrick;
the fact that every time I re-read a Marlows book, I notice something that I
hadn’t before.

Best books

End
of Term – arguably the best book in the Forest
canon. Lawrie Marlow has her heart set on getting a major role in the
end-of-term play, while Nicola wants to get into the junior netball team. Lois
Sanger’s meddling ensures things don’t turn out the way the twins had hoped. End of Term contains two particularly
gorgeous scenes – the description of the Christmas play and Nicola and
Patrick’s ride into Wade Abbas at half-term.

The
Cricket Term – Forget double Ashes: the greatest
rivalry in cricket is Nicola Marlow v. Lois Sanger as they lead their respective
forms to the final of the inter-form cup. Nicola has other worries too, as her
parents’ financial worries mean she might have to leave Kingscote. The cricket
match at the end of the book is up there with my other favourite literary
cricket match, the one in The Go-Between
(LP Hartley).

Peter’s
Room – Ginty’s school project on the Brontes
teaches her about the make-believe ‘Gondal’ universe they created, and the
Marlows and Patrick Merrick spend a snowy Christmas holiday doing some
Gondalling themselves. Their fantasy world brings Ginty and Patrick closer
together, and there’s an unfortunate incident with a gun… This is probably the
darkest book in the Marlow series, but a pivotal one in terms of the
Nicola/Patrick/Ginty relationship.

The
Ready-Made Family – Karen drops out of university
to marry her lecturer Edwin Dodds and become stepmum to his kids. This goes
down like a cup of cold sick with her family, who (with the exception of
Nicola) treat Edwin pretty shabbily. Not that Edwin does much to endear himself
to either the family or the reader… In a surprising storyline for a book
published in 1967, Edwin’s daughter Rose runs away from Trennels and into the
arms of a paedophile, ‘Uncle Gerry’.

Who they’ll appeal to

I can’t think of a contemporary equivalent
of the Marlows books, but readers who enjoy realistic school and family stories,
memorable characters and social history should give these books a go.

Books by the same author

In The
Cricket Term, Edwin and Nicola discover that the Marlows had a thespian
ancestor, Nicholas Marlow, who travelled with Shakespeare and performed in his
plays. Two historical novels – The
Player’s Boy and The Players and the
Rebels – tell the story of Nicholas Marlow. These are well worth a read,
especially if you have an interest in Shakespearean England.

The
Thursday Kidnapping is Forest’s only non-Marlow
novel. It’s set in London and features the Ramsay family, who discover that a
child they’re babysitting has gone missing.

Catch Liz over on her website, Story Spinner, or on Twitter.
And read her wonderful book, First Term at Cotterford - a must for fans
of girls' boarding school stories! (Plus, if you read it now, you'll be
ready for the upcoming sequel...) Grab it for Kindle here.

1 comment:

I've long been a Marlows fan, and I really enjoyed reading this. I'd actually agree - pretty much - with your "best books" assessment too, except that I'd put Cricket Term first. And I'd put The Players and the Rebels somewhere in the top five too. It's a really cracking - exciting, thoughtful, atmospheric - read.